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Winter Wonderland at Tilles Park

On Wednesday we went to see the Winter Wonderland light display at Tilles Park. This is an annual event that is designed and set up by St. Louis County Parks employees. This year was the 27th year that they have been doing the event! This event is a display set up inside the park and patrons drive through in their cars. The number of lights that they set up was amazing! There are also horse-drawn carriage rides through the park and on Saturdays they only allow carriages.

We actually attempted to see Winter Wonderland the previous Sunday but the line of cars was miles long! After our failed attempt on Sunday we regrouped and decided to get tickets for the carriage ride instead. The event costs $10 per car but the cheapest carriage ride is $10 per person. We ended up paying twice as much, but we had a set reservation and we didn’t have to wait in line.

It started pouring rain just as our carriage pulled up! Fortunately, the carriage was covered and we ended up staying very dry. There was a mist of rain and some people had to watch out for water pouring off of the roof but we fared pretty well.

We decided to go for the least expensive carriage option which was a large carriage that was filled with strangers. You could also rent small and medium carriages privately for more money. The carriage we were in held around 20 people, most of whom were actually related.

Some of the horses were dressed up as reindeer with antlers and red noses!

Most of my pictures are very blurry because the carriage rarely stopped. This is a problem because to get good pictures of lights you need to turn off the flash.

The lights were amazing! The ride was about 15-20 minutes long filled with several different vignettes. They had a cool carousel effect where different horses lit up making it look like they were moving in a circle. The most amazing effect was of a flowing river! There was a stream of blue lights that moved like water. The river was dotted with deer and some swimming fish.

Do you want a hippopotamus for Christmas?

The light display had several versions of Santa with and without his reindeer. They had a series of lights illustrating the 12 Days of Christmas. I wish I could have taken pictures that really show how spectacular the lights are.

Upon entering the park, one of the first things we saw was a tunnel of lights that we passed through.

This is a close-up of the design of the holly tunnel

We had a great time and I think we will definitely do this again next year!